Drones

Drones doing drone work

Drones are autonomous craft deployed from a ship with a Drone Bay, which can be configured to do any type of activity - Combat, Mining or Salvage.

The individual setup of drones is entirely up to player. It's quite common to use drones for defence while main turrets are dedicated to mining, or vice versa.

ECHO can use drones, and will actively deploy them and returns them to the Ship when it decides to leave a POI. Player can also deploy them manually by clicking the "Deploy" button at the bottom of the screen.

Drones can be destroyed by environmental hazards or by enemy activity. When destroyed, the Drone Bay will manufacture new ones after a short delay. Leaving drones behind when doing an Emergency Jump is also not an issue, as the drones will be reset by the time they are re-deployed.

Drone types

Example Drone Layout

Available Drone types depend on the Drone skills unlocked. Basic ones (mining laser, salvage laser, combat laser) are always available, while advanced drone types (mining core, salvage harpoon, combat missile) are unlocked by Advanced Drone Access skill.

Advanced Drone Access skill

Behaviour

Once released, drones act on their own for most activities. They can be re-focused on a single Object by double-clicking it - be it an asteroid or a combat vessel.

In combat all drones will focus the target clicked or that attacks the player first unless ordered otherwise.

While Mining or Salvage, once set free, drones start targeting everything in sight. When autopiloting/idling, ECHO will direct them to targets to focus on - whichever target ECHO chooses first.

Drone Power

Drone Power Distribution. Disclaimer: AI created image

When a drone fires, the game pools its power from three places and then divides that pool across all turrets (ship turrets + drone slots) of the same class. The pool a drone shot sees is:

shared pool = ship's PowerStat                    (CombatPower / MiningPower / SalvagePower)
            + ship's DronePower                   (the bay's drone-power stat line)
            + sum of every drone's own PowerStat  (each loaded drone's turret rating)

That pool is then run through the standard per-turret attack-power formula — divided by the ship-wide equivalentTurrets (counting ship hardpoints and drone slots of the same class), reduced by the stacking penalty, and scaled by the drone turret's own size rating and weapon-model multiplier.

Power pools are per class. Combat, mining, and salvage each have their own pool — combat-drone power doesn't help mining drones and vice versa. The bay's own DronePower stat is shared into each class pool the bay's drones use; if you mix 2 combat + 2 salvage drones, the bay's DronePower contributes to both the combat pool and the salvage pool.

Example: Drone Bay with 4 slots, 2 combat drones (each laser rated 500 CombatPower) + 2 salvage drones (each harpoon rated 500 SalvagePower), bay listed at 1,000 DronePower; ship has no other combat or salvage turrets and 0 CombatPower / 0 SalvagePower from other sources.

• Combat pool seen by either combat drone = 0 (ship) + 1,000 (bay DronePower) + (500 + 500) (the two combat drones) = 2,000
• Salvage pool seen by either salvage drone = 0 (ship) + 1,000 (bay DronePower) + (500 + 500) (the two salvage drones) = 2,000

Each drone then takes a slice of its class pool sized by its own turret rating (1, for a Small drone laser), with the standard stacking penalty applied to the bay's combined equivalent-turret weight.

The bay's contribution is one-way. The bay's DronePower feeds drone shots (via the pools above), but the drones' own per-turret power does not feed ship turrets — only the ship's own hardpoints contribute to a ship turret's attack power.

For the full damage formula, per-turret attack power derivation, and a detailed worked example, see Damage and mitigation § Drones.

Drone Bays and Skills

Drone Bays exist in all rarities and sizes. Depending on the Size the bay can store and control different amounts of Drones.

Drone Bay sizes

Size	Small	Medium	Large
Picture:
Max Drones:	3 (5*) (7**)	6 (10*) (12**)	9 (13*) (15**)
*With Aspect:	Up to 2 more Drones with Extended Drone Bay	Up to 4 more Drones with Oversized Drone Bay	Up to 4 more Drones with Oversized Drone Bay
**With Skills:	Up to 4 more Drones with the Skills: Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control	Up to 6 more Drones with the Skills: Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control	Up to 6 more Drones with the Skills: Drone Squad Expansion / Expanded Drone Control

There are 2 Drone Bay exclusive Aspects that increase the maximum Amount of Drones that can be stored and controlled.

Unassigned Drones

If a Drone Bay has free/unassigned drone Slots, the game will fill them up randomly. It's best to choose Drones until all slots are filled.

Drone Bay View:

Drone Mechanics Calculations

combatDronePool = commanderCombatPower + commanderDronePower + sum(all combat drones' CombatPower)

combatEquivalentTurrets = sum(ship combat turret ratings) + sum(combat drone ratings)

sharedCombatPower = combatDronePool / combatEquivalentTurrets

sharedCombatPowerAfterPenalty = sharedCombatPower * crowdPenalty

attackPowerPerDroneTurret = sharedCombatPowerAfterPenalty * droneTurretRating * droneTurretPowerMultiplier

damagePerShot = ( attackPowerPerDroneTurret / 5 ) * random(0.8 to 1.25) / defaultAttacksPerSecond

damageAfterCrit = damagePerShot * (2 + critDamage)^critCount

finalOutgoingDamage = damageAfterCrit * (1 + typeBonus + genericDamageBonus)

finalTakenDamage = finalOutgoingDamage * max(0.2, 1 - reduction - resist)

remainingDamage -> shield -> armor -> hull